by Glenn F. Bunting

WASHINGTON--The Clinton administration,
acting at the direction of the president and
first lady, created a massive computer data
system with federal funds in 1994 to keep tabs on
as many as 350,000 people, including large
political donors, Democratic campaign workers and
visitors to the White House.

Internal documents reveal that the White
House issued guidelines and legal opinions
advising that the system could be used only for
official government purposes. But the White House
staff frequently retrieved data on large
political contributors and turned it over to the
Democratic National Committee to help raise money
for the president's reelection, interviews show.

The use of the computer, dubbed "WhoDB" for
White House Office Data Base, provides further
indications that aspects of the Democratic
Party's $125-million fund-raising effort were
carried out in the White House and that some of
its components were based there.

Also, the records reflect the assortment of
perquisites beyond private coffee klatches with
the president that the administration made
available for prospective donors: seats aboard
Air Force One, personal notes from Clinton, lunch
in the White House mess and invitations to watch
a movie in the East Wing.

It is entirely legal and customary for the
White House to gather information from a variety
of sources to help the president in his
"official" capacity. But federal laws prohibit
the administration from providing such data to a
nongovernment organization, particularly a
political committee such as the Democratic Party,
for partisan purposes.

White House spokesman Barry Toiv said that
the computer system serves as an electronic
social calendar by storing lists of people who
have been invited to presidential events or
received holiday cards from the first family.

"The database is not a tool for tracking
contributors," Toiv said. "Nobody outside the
White House was given access to it." He said that
the program logging perks was developed for the
computer but never actually used.

However, a former top Democratic official
said in an interview that he and his staff
routinely used WhoDB to identify likely
candidates for increased donations. For example,
he said, the staff found out how many White House
invitations certain donors were receiving, so
they could arrange more events for prospective
contributors.

This began in 1995 when the party was
striving to raise money early for Clinton's
reelection in the wake of the Republican
landslide the year before.

"I started checking back with the White
House just as a routine matter," said Truman
Arnold, a Texas oil executive who served at
Clinton's request as finance chairman of the DNC
during most of 1995. "It didn't seem to be very
privileged to me. It was open to a lot of
people."

Experts in campaign finance said that the
national committee's use of the information
stored in WhoDB raises questions about whether
the administration went over the line in using
government equipment and personnel for political
purposes.

"This is a very sophisticated, state of the
art information file that is of great use
internally to the White House staff and the
president," said Herbert E. Alexander, a USC
political science professor and director of the
Citizens' Research Foundation. "But using that
file for political purposes with an outside
agency like the DNC is beyond the law and ought
to be the subject of an investigation."

Since July, a House Government Reform and
Oversight subcommittee has been investigating
WhoDB. The subcommittee is at odds with the White
House over the release of computer records and is
threatening to issue subpoenas for more material.

Democratic officials said they were not able
to confirm Wednesday whether the DNC had used the
White House computer for fund-raising purposes.
"We are looking at this internally right now,"
said spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe.

Internal memos obtained by The Times reveal
that the administration took steps to keep the
White House database secret.

In a Jan. 26, 1994, memo marked
"confidential" to the first lady and top
presidential aide Bruce Lindsey, deputy assistant
to the president Marsha Scott wrote that all
WhoDB equipment and records were in a locked room
in the Old Executive Office Building next door to
the White House and that she had taken extra
precautions to ensure that the project was not
subject to disclosure under the federal Freedom
of Information Act.

According to a report filed by "The WhoDB
Team," the president and first lady requested in
late 1993 that the White House staff start a
resource database that would track official
correspondence by the president and certain White
House employees. It would allow staff members to
plan future events and meetings as well as to
compile a list for holiday cards.

The White House provided the subcommittee
with a count of 355,211 individuals listed in the
system. Toiv, however, said that the system
contains the names of about 200,000 people. They
include members of Congress, mayors, governors,
community leaders, business leaders and
reporters. Private information such as addresses,
home telephones, Social Security numbers and
dates of birth also are included, in part to
expedite clearance into the White House by the
Secret Service.

Documents show descriptions entered in a
"Political Participation" field include "DNC
Latino 1000," "Early Supporter--Financial," "1992
General Election Fundraiser" and "DNC Trustee."
The latter designation identified party donors
who gave more than $100,000 a year.

These labels, according to administration
officials, were used to help identify the
backgrounds of visitors invited to attend White
House functions or meet with the president and
others.

"To the extent there are contributors in
there, the vast majority of them [have] no
indications of how much they gave or when they
gave," Toiv said. "The database was not used in
any way to solicit campaign contributions."

Nor were WhoDB files used to select guests
to be invited to the 103 coffee klatches at the
White House in the last two years, Toiv said.
"That would be an inappropriate use of the
database."

The WhoDB manual and memos from the White
House legal counsel make clear that the database
may be used only for "official purposes." In
July, then-White House Counsel Jack Quinn said in
a memo that providing information to "any outside
source, including any campaign committees, for
unofficial purposes is an impermissible use" of
the database.

However, people familiar with the system
said that during the last two years DNC workers
routinely used the database as a fund-raising
tool to recruit prospective donors and to solicit
large contributions.

Arnold, the former party finance chairman,
said that he was given a fund-raising goal of $42
million when he joined the national committee in
March 1995. Arnold said he focused on
reconnecting the party with contributors who had
given in 1992 but who had "fallen from the fold."

To do this, Arnold said, party staff members
tapped the White House computer base, usually
calling for the information. Arnold said that the
national committee occasionally dealt with Ann
Stock, head of the White House social office.
Stock could not be reached for comment.

"It was most helpful to us because we were
looking to the disaffected," Arnold said. "The
database helped us to see who had been invited to
what."

In some cases, Arnold said, the party
discovered through the computer that donors who
had given $25,000 had received numerous
invitations to the White House, while supporters
who had given $100,000 or more received nothing.

Arnold said he saw to it that the national
committee focused attention on big donors who had
been ignored by showering them with invitations
that included movies at the White House theater,
state dinners, seats aboard Air Force One, White
House coffees and rounds of golf with Clinton.

"This was the way we reconnected to people.
. . . " Arnold said. "And when you started having
fund-raisers . . . they would be the first people
to show up and work for you."

However, Toiv said, the computer was not
used to aid fund-raising. "That is not the way it
was used," he said. "The DNC would only be
calling in response to the White House wanting to
know what names they would want to submit to an
official event."

Rep. David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.), who is
leading the House investigation into the
database, said it is evident that the White House
was doing more than organizing social events and
planning holiday greeting cards.

"It looks like the Democrats set up their
donor-tracking software at the White House rather
than the DNC," he said. "We have to get to the
bottom of this."